Viewing the effects of species loss in complex ecological networks

Abstract

Species loss is becoming a major threat to ecosystems. An urgent task in ecology is to predict the consequence of species loss which requires an extending of our traditional study of the topology of network structure to the population dynamic analyses in complex food webs. Here, via numerical simulations of the model combining structural networks with nonlinear bioenergetic models of population dynamics, we analyzed the secondary effects of species removal on biomass distribution and population stability, as well as the factors influencing these effects. We found that the biomass of target species, the nutrient supply, and the trophic level of target species were the three most significant determiners for the effects of species loss. Species loss had large negative effect on the biomass of the species with small biomass or intermediate trophic levels, especially in infertile environment. The population stability of the species with large biomass or low trophic level is easily to be influenced especially in nutrient-rich environment. Our findings indicate the species which are easily to be affected by species loss in food webs, which may help ecologists to outline a better conservation policy.